"Five Poems? You call this hippy free verse stuff poetry?" EE looked like he was having a coronary as I handed him the hand-written manuscript. He flipped through.
"Peace and love."
"I don't see limericks. Don't see Haiku. Do see groovy drugged-out, hippy in a paper sack, smelling of Mary Jane."
I held two fingers to my lips and sucked in a deep, deep breath. "Not to worry. It's a timely, culturally significant gas. It's great shit." I retorted. He frowned.
"Cultural? Like the Aaaawwwwwoooooooooooo poem. Let's meet Raul the Goatherd and his howling dogs."
"It's howl as in wail. Not bay at a moon. A discourse on society's dehumanization and degradation of what's good."
"You're joking, aren’t you? I saw the best minds running naked down mountain paths covered in goat shit, and 'angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.' What does that mean? Seriously, not my cup of tea, rhymes with Honna-lee and gets policemen beating the doors because they think it's smutty pornography."
"Are you experienced?"
"Apparently not. What's a sutra?"
"An Indian composition of aphorisms accompanied by sitar."
"Are you sure of that?"
"It's a trippy rap from a lost soul."
"Loser, L-O-S-E-R. Bear in mind that 'for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache' as an American lament can't ever reach the heights of glory that 'In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo' hits. Now that's good free verse by Elliot. I can't publish some bearded hippy named Ginsberg. I suggest you take your rambler vine and climb up the cottage post and experience the leaves in the night and go hang out with that bearded fool Ferlinghetti at City Lights who digs Coney Island beatniks."
--Dave F.
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6 comments:
OUCH!
I'm picturing Robert McNamara and Ghandi hanging out.
I love this alternative reality where EE talks exactly like Dave. Good stuff! How about combining with EE's exercise and having a pop-up Kama Sutra?
Seriously, not my cup of tea, rhymes with Honna-lee and gets policemen beating the doors because they think it's smutty pornography.
Pure poetry
Ah, another entry that features a burning bush. There must be something in the air.
There were police waiting to arrest Allen Ginsburg if he read HOWL after it was published. This was about the same time as Lenny Bruce and The Man didn't like that dirty f***ing hippy shit. Ferlinghetti was arrested for publishing porn and exonerated by the courts. That's a landmark case in First Amendment Law.
On the Road by Kerouac was published in 1957 and Burrrough's Naked Lunch came out in '59. That's the "Beat" triumverate of literature and the start of the late 1960's cultural revolution.
I suspect that Ferlinghetti who I like as a poet (still alive at 90 y/o) heard the first reading in 1955 or heard about it soon after.
EE might sound like me because of the word limit. I really squash the exercises to get down to 300 words. Writing someone else always takes more words.
Curiously, I made EE prescient about "Honna-Lee" which is from "Puff the Magic Dragon." Paul YArrow was a friend of the writer. It was published as a poem in 1959 and sung by Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962.
If anyone wonders, Pat Buchanan hates me for being a DFH.
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